


Enduring Love

by pr_squared



Category: Forgotten Realms
Genre: Drow, F/M, Jealousy, Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:41:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28361841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pr_squared/pseuds/pr_squared
Kudos: 2





	Enduring Love

Pride in her daughters gave Ilphaere shale Xunbaste Maeduis the strength to cope with today’s embarrassment. Her daughter Irae worked in steel, Umrae in magic, and Xullrae in leather. Olorae, her eldest, lacked any artistic skill but she honored her mother, treated her sisters with kindness, and did what was needed. 

Olorae had captured Ne’endra Everhana, long-time enemy of her House. When they had tired of playing with her, Irae had forged Ilphaere a new dagger and tempered it in Ne’endra’s beating heart. Umrae had bound Ne’endra’s dying curses to the blade, enhancing its lethality. Ilphraere carried the favored blade in a sheath that Xullrae had crafted from Ne-endra’s skin. They had left a patch undamaged for such a use. 

Today, Ilphaere would attend a celebration announcing her lover’s Grazzek’s formal betrothal to her bitter rival Viertreedriira Baenviir. That a male might prefer a half-orc slut to her? His Lady Mother had commanded him. Well, better he had taken his own life than submit! The entire Council of Menzoberranzan would witness her humiliation. Somehow, she would find the strength and endure. She had taken great pleasure from Grizzek’s body and had enjoyed his eagerness to give her pleasure. She recalled the feel of the dark skin stretched over his powerful body. Now, she would have to find an alternative diversion. Viertreedriira, would enjoy his eager attentions. 

Her lady mother had warned her that she had doted too much on the handsome enough drow and accused her of acting like one who hadn’t passed her hundredth year. Surely Ilphaere might find someone else who tickled her fancy – a nephew or younger son of a noble house or something pretty and diverting from their slave kennel. Honestly, she chided her daughter, they all look more or less the same with their faces between your thighs. 

Grazzek saw Ilphaere across the hall and looked back quickly to Viertreedriira who held his arm possessively. He feared that his new lady might detect his distraction. Both black-skinned drowesses were breathtakingly beautiful and elegant in public and pleasantly wiggly and wet in private. He had had them both or perhaps they had had him. He would have valued an alliance with either house. His lady mother had decided - Viertreedriira Baenviir and here he stood, obedient to her wishes. 

Well, he had one piece of unfinished mischief before he retired with his new lady and his new life. Olorae, Ilpharae’s eldest, had plotted a daring assignation, right in Viertreedriira’s own bed chamber. A mother and daughter both. That was an achievement, even for a long-lived drow, even if not at the same time. In the same bed at the same time – that would be quite a threesome. Viertreedriira would be distracted by the party but how Olorae hoped to sneak in past the guards and this throng, exceeded Grazzek’s powers of imagination. That was her challenge, however, and not his. If she were captured he suspected that he might enjoy diversions of a different kind. His now was only to enjoy the fruits of her efforts. Mother and daughter both, he smiled. Please don’t let my lady mother know, she pleaded, as if he would be the one to share such news with Ilphaere shalee'Xunbaste Maeduis or Viertreedriira Basenviir. 

The servants told Viertreedriira that Grazzek awaited her in her chamber. She was not quite ready to leave the festivities. Her current fondness for him made her ignore his presumption. He would learn but she took her time in her leave taking. She found the party very enjoyable. “Thank you for sharing my happiness,” she said to Ilphaere and wondered if her false smile matched that of her rival. “A certain fellow, we both know quite well, awaits me upstairs,” teased and studied Ilphaere’s face, hoping to see a flash of envy. 

“Every happiness,” Ilphaere had wished her as she walked away and lifted her glass in tribute. She finished in a whisper when Viertreedriira had passed out of earshot. “Every happiness you deserve.”

The guards opened the heavy doors and an unpleasant odor assailed her. Viertreedriira saw Grizzek lying beneath the silken covers of her bed, apparently sleeping. He had drunk too much perhaps. In his drink-induced stupor, had he fouled her chamber with his vomit or lost control of his bowels amidst her finery. His face looked peaceful and relaxed, exactly the opposite of how Viertreedriira felt and she promised herself that he would soon share her displeasure. She steadied herself by imagining him hanging helpless from in the manacles of her whipping post – his naked well-muscled body dancing at the touch of her lash  
She rushed forward and ripped away the covers to find Grizzek lying in a pool of blood, dead, not sleeping. His handsome face was unmarked, but his throat had been cut, and his body neatly flayed from the neck down except for his drow-dark hands and feet. She turned away in anger, more than horror, and saw the open window but not before she noted that his male paraphernalia had been taken with his skin. She ranted and raged at the violation of her own home, but found a certain solace in her devising of a proper punishment for her incompetent guards.

The mystery went unsolved and Grizzek’s death meant little in the game of Houses for in the end, he was only a male. 

With Grizzek gone, Viertreedriira and Ilpharae found more reasons to be friends than enemies. They had many shared tastes and their Houses had interests in common. Viertreedriira found herself sitting in Ilphaere’s private study and sharing a glass of green Ulaver wine. As custom dictated, Viertreedriira had the choice of glasses and her hostess called on her eldest daughter Olorae to taste her guest’s glass. The custom persisted though all knew of Houses that had sacrificed an eldest daughter to destroy a hated rival. Viertreedriira also knew of lethal but slow-acting poisons with effective antidotes but calculated that she was safe for now.

Viertreedriira chuckled to see obscene objects on display on the mantelpiece, so proud in their pathetic yearnings. You don’t bring your boyfriends in here, do you?” she asked. 

Ilphaere stroked the smooth, dark leather of her favorite chair, a special gift from her eldest Olorae. She loved the feel of the sensuous leather. She surveyed the tokens of her varied romances. She contemplated how attraction erupts into passion, passion rages and consumes itself, leaving only boredom. Like the wind scattering a crumbling heap of ash, time eventually erodes any lingering affection, leaving only irritation and annoyance. In the end, only hate endures. 

Obviously, one cannot have her ex-lovers revealing her intimate secrets and boasting of their “conquest.” Curiously, the same word “love” is used to describe both the lifelong ties within a family and among friends and the transitory flirtations of the sexes. Perhaps it is different among the shorter-lived races, she allowed. “Not until a rather late stage in our relationships.”

Viertreedriira’s eyes flitted from one display of manhood to the other, carefully mounted to preserve their arrogance. “Can you tell them apart?”

“Usually not,” Ilphaere answered after some thought.


End file.
